This application relates to the trading or exchange of securities or commodities within an organized system.
Electronically-based trading systems have gained widespread popularity over the years. Such trading systems are frequently used for trading items ranging from financial instruments (such as stocks, bonds, currency, futures contracts, etc.) to used household goods (such as old records, baseball cards, antiques, etc.). In many of these trading systems, bid/offer-hit/lift processes are used to negotiate a sale of a given item. In connection with such processes, bids and/or offers for items are entered into an electronic trading system, and a hit or lift is submitted in response to a bid or offer, respectively, to agree to a sale or purchase.
Currently, prior to entering a bid or offer into an electronic trading system or submitting a hit or lift in response to a specific bid or offer, traders can review trading-related information in a tabular format. For example, the trader can access a table that includes a list of financial instruments and corresponding bids and offers for each of the instruments. Based on the information provided to the trader in the table, the trader can determine, for example, what bids or offers to enter into the electronic trading system or which existing bids and offers are desirable to hit or lift. However, these determinations can be difficult due to the overwhelming amount of information provided to the trader in the table.
Currently, traders can also access graphical representations of financial markets to gain an overall understanding of a market's activity. Graphs, in contrast to tables of financial information, make it easier for the trader to determine market trends. However, these graphs are not interactive, as the trader is only provided with a representation of the current activity of a market and is not able to enter a bid or offer or submit a hit or lift directly from the graph.